»It’s like Sergio Leone and David Lynch had an Iranian rock ’n’ roll baby, and then Nosferatu came and babysat for them.«
– Ana Lily Amirpour

Somewhere in Iran, surrounded by gigantic oil drilling platforms in the middle of the desert, is the ghost town of Bad City. Shady underworld characters are the only people still living in this wasteland: prostitutes, pimps, junkies and other lost souls.
This is the home of the young Arash. He looks after his father, a drug addict and compulsive gambler who is heavily in debt. The opening scene shows the teenager wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, leaning against a fence like James Dean. It took him years to save up for his 1950s sports car. When drug dealer and pimp Saeed gets his hands on the car, Arash is distraught.
He roams the ghost town streets at night and eventually encounters the girl in the title of the film on her way home. The stranger is a vampire.

Making numerous references to film history, this Iranian »Vampire Western« develops into a poignant love story. »Girl« kills men but only those who prove to be evil thugs. She spares Arash, who ironically encounters her the first time as Dracula. At the latest when »Girl« skates down a deserted street on her skateboard, her long chador billowing in the wind behind her, Amipour’s vampire distances herself from the rest of the genre. Inspired by pop icons of the past few decades, the director creates a narrative universe with its own set of rules and a surreal atmosphere in her film directing debut (produced, among others, by Elijah Wood). The black-and-white pictures are overlaid with a dense soundtrack, a mixture of Ennio Morricone and techno.

Film programme Life’s a Bitch